Welcome back to The Rundown, our daily breakdown on comic news stories we missed from the previous day. Have a link to share? Email our team at rundown@multiversitycomics.com.
In case you missed it, IDW announced several new titles helping mark the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ 40th anniversary this year.
– Dark Horse announced an eight-part adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s fantasy comedy novel Anansi Boys, scripted by Marc Bernardin with art by Shawn Martinbrough. Like the book, the comic tells the story of “Fat” Charlie Nancy, a Black British man who learns his recently deceased father was the African trickster god Anansi, and that he has a twin brother named Spider. It arrives ahead of the still undated Amazon Prime series, starring Malachi Kirby as Charlie & Spider, and Delroy Lindo as “Mr. Nancy.” Chris Sotomayor and Jim Campbell will respectively handle the colors and lettering. Issue #1 will be released on June 26 with a main cover by David Mack, and variants by Martinbrough and Denys Cowan.
– Oni Press have acquired the license for the Adventure Time comics, originally published by BOOM! Studios. In addition to brand-new comics, which will be announced at a later date, Oni will rerelease the first 35 issues of BOOM!’s main series in the “Adventure Time Compendium Vol. 1,” this October, and the first spin-off comic in “Adventure Time: The Fionna and Cake Compendium” in November. Adventure Time aired on Cartoon Network from 2010 to 2018, while the comics ran from 2012 to 2019, and it has spawned two spin-off shows, Distant Lands and Fionna and Cake (a second season of which is in production.)
– Speaking of BOOM!, the publisher announced “Briar” will return with issue #5 on May 15. The gritty 2022 reimagining of “Sleeping Beauty,” written by Christopher Cantwell, was originally intended as a miniseries, before BOOM! announced it would become an ongoing last year. Alex Lins (“Monarch”) will take over from co-creator Germán García on art. The second arc will pick up with Briar Rose and her companions now working as bounty hunters, when Spider “hatches a plan that will get them closer than ever to Briar’s malevolent fairy godmother – to the castle of Grendrid herself!”
– Readers will get to return to Krakoa and witness Mystique and Destiny renew their marriage vows in “X-Men: The Wedding Special,” a ‘Marvel’s Voices: Pride’ one-shot releasing May 29. The main event was written by Kieron Gillen, while Tini Howard, Wyatt Kennedy, Tate Brombal, and Yoon Ha Lee (the latter two making their Marvel debuts) will pen additional stories, with the artists to be announced at a later time. Marvel also revealed the last two ‘Blood Hunt’ one-shots: “Werewolf by Night,” starring Jake Gomez, by Jason Loo & Adam Gorham, and “Hulk” by Phillip Kennedy Johnson & Danny Earls. They will arrive at the end of the crossover in July.
– Two new Mark Russell projects were revealed: the first was “My Bad: Escape from Peculiar Island,” the third volume of the writer, Bryce Ingman, Peter Krause, and Kelly Fitzpatrick’s supervillain comedy at AHOY. The five-issue series begins May 15. The second was “Death Ratio’d,” a one-shot horror comedy with artist Laci (“Trojan”) at AWA Studios, that tells the story of a man who wakes up from a coma 20 years from now, and discovers social media has become literally lethal. It will be released on May 29.
– Lionsgate have scheduled The Crow remake for a June 7, 2024 release date. The decision was made after the studio opted to delay the John Wick spin-off Ballerina, which was originally scheduled for that day, until next year. The new Crow movie, directed by Rupert Sanders, stars Bill Skarsgård as Eric Draven, and FKA twigs as Shelly Webster, plus Danny Huston in an unnamed role. It will arrive 30 years after the original film based on James O’Barr’s comic, starring the late Brandon Lee, and its recently announced 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray release on May 7.
– The winners of the 35th annual VES Awards were announced. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse picked up four awards, including Outstanding Animated Character in an Animated Feature for the Spot, while Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 won the equivalent prize for a photoreal picture thanks to Rocket Raccoon, and Outstanding Virtual Cinematography in a CG Project. The Flash movie won the Emerging Technology Award for pioneering the use of volumetric capture, while The Mandalorian won Outstanding Effects Simulations in an Episode, Commercial, or Real-Time Project for the lake monster sequence.
Continued below– In more Hollywood award news, the nominations for the WGA Awards were announced. Comic book shows dominated the Children’s Episodic category, with Sweet Tooth‘s “The Ballad of the Last Men,” One Piece‘s “Romance Dawn,” and American Born Chinese‘s “What Guy Are You” all getting nominated for the award alongside Goosebumps & Percy Jackson and the Olympians. The Last of Us, Star Trek: Picard, and Futurama also picked up nominations, with the latter’s sister show The Simpsons receiving almost every nomination in the Animation category. The winners will be revealed on Sunday, April 14.
– Piper Perabo has joined the cast of Butterfly, the Prime Video series based on Arash Amel, Marguerite Bennett, Antonio Fuso, and Stefano Simeone’s BOOM! Studios comic. The six-episode series will star Daniel Dae Kim as a retired government operative living in South Korea, who finds himself pursued by an assassin (Reina Hardesty). Perabo will play Juno, the Machiavellian CEO of an intelligence company. Cameras are set to begin rolling on the series, which will also star Park Hae-soo, Kim Tae-hee, and Nayoon Kim, soon.
– Finally, DCEU Deathstroke actor Joe Manganiello revealed he has written his own screenplay for the character, and that Jim Lee was interested in turning it into a comic book. Manganiello, who played Slade Wilson in Justice League, and was going to reprise the role in Ben Affleck’s version of The Batman, told Comic Book that he discussed the project with James Gunn, because he realized “that if [the comic] garnered the attention of directors and producers, that I couldn’t be attached [because of the end of the DCEU.] So I had to let it go. James Gunn was just like, ‘Let it go.'” Manganiello’s previous writing credits include various student films, and he has been an official ambassador and paid consultant for Dungeons & Dragons, even writing an unproduced screenplay for the franchise.
